The competition to win the sophisticated sock toy is now open to the interwebs!

All you need to do to win him is give him a name and make a small donation to my volunteering work with International Animal Rescue. The minimum donation is a mere 50 British pence.

To enter, use the donate button below.

THE NOT-SO SMALL PRINT

25% of all money raised will go directly to International Animal Rescue. A maximum of 3 entries per person is allowed and the competition will close on the 11th July 2010 at 11.59pm GMT. A name will be drawn from all entries at random and the winner will be informed via the email address they entered into Paypal within 7 days.

Scarily there are only 99 days to go before I leave my job, and maybe only a few more left after that until I fly to India again. I'm crapping myself (to put it eloquently).

To ease my fears I've decided that I will do one thing a day, no matter how big or small, that will help me on my journey and today I'm going to pick up a provisional driving license form.

I've never driven any vehicle in my life, but to get around in India, I need a scooter so I'm biting the bullet, getting a provisional license and getting a few lessons. It goes against all of my environmental ideals but I figure I'm going to be saving animals so the Bad Kelly/Good Kelly ratio should balance itself out (<-rubbish theory to make me feel better).

I particularly love how the women passengers side-saddle the scooters. Sigh... 99 days to go.

From this October, I’ll be going out to Goa, India to volunteer for International Animal Rescue!

To raise money I’ll be running between Bournemouth and Swanage on Saturday 4th September 2010. For those of you who don’t know the trek, it’s an arduous 11.4 miles in the south coast of England, including running on sand and some nasty hills!

BUT WHY?!

This March, I went out to Goa to visit a friend. Within the first few days I spent there it became very apparent to me that there was a huge problem with stray and unwanted domesticated animals. Dogs and cats loiter the streets and beaches, hot, malnourished, and mange and flea ridden. By night, the dogs (who are mostly unneutered) become aggressive and territorial. They attack each other, leading to wounds which when left untreated, can become infected causing pain and sometimes death.

International Animal Rescue (IAR) in Goa have a fantastic programme which takes in sick, injured or pregnant strays from the streets and nurses them back to health. Whenever possible, the animals are neutered which helps to counteract two major problems: the increasing population of stray animals and the fighting amongst male dogs.

Pregnant females are taken in and their litters are homed to loving families. The mother herself is neutered and sent back to her ‘patch’ once healthy and appointments are given to the new families of the puppies and kittens so that they too can be neutered.

Additionally IAR also take in other animals. One such example are cows. When I visited them, one particular cow had an awful wound across the whole of one side of her body. She had been eating crops from a farmer’s field and in retaliation the farmer had thrown acid on her. This had also happened to a male, who unfortunately didn’t make it. As for the female, in the brief time I was there her health improved massively, all thanks to the love and care of the people at IAR.

My aim is to spend 6 months volunteering for IAR, nursing animals, educating people and promoting veganism. As I am doing this off my own back, including arranging my own flights, accommodation and food I’m hoping that people who support this cause will sponsor me. 25% of ALL sponsorship will go directly to IAR Goa, and the rest will help to support me whilst I volunteer.

Please follow the link below and donate whatever you can. Even the smallest amount can go a long way in India.

Thank you for your support! Your generosity is appreciated more than you know!

I've been rather ill and have not been able to leave the house today. But sick or not, I'm not one to miss an opportunity and so I set upon finding a nice new pre-made layout for the blog. I'm quite happy with it and I'm glad to have updated the image; my hair is bordering on ginger now and the previous illustration of me was out of date (but extremely lovely nonetheless).

Instead now I have morphed into a gingery orange one-eyed monster. OK, so that's not me - it's Kurt, the first little guy I ever crocheted, just over a year ago (see the post dedicated to him here). He's a simple looking fella but somehow he manages to melt everybody's heart.

The new layout has some rather lovely features including:

a search function, so you can find all posts on, say, knitting or poop, or knitted poops

subscribe to Monster Makes via email, so you don't have to remember to check back ever again